Breaking into a Web3 Sprynt to make cryptocurrency work for all
If you went on holiday from Europe to the States you’d expect your debit or credit card to work in the same way as home – so why not your cryptocurrency?
Newcomers to the crypto world are constantly surprised at the difficulty of using crypto in a simplified manner while OGs tend to put up with the inconvenience. That situation might just be mended though, by entrepreneur and founder Selin Suntay who is presenting her start-up Sprynt as a means to unify disparate tokens and enable payment from a combination of coins.
“We can’t just keep chanting ‘crypto will revolutionise payments’ while crypto users still face roadblocks when conducting on-chain transactions,” says Suntay.
Suntay did not begin in crypto and perhaps that is why she is applying common sense to this volatile and unpredictable industry. Originally, she trained as a lawyer in Brussels and went to work in Deloitte which she enjoyed for the diversity of legal cases. However, as she left university, she also set up a philanthropic food sharing not-for-profit organisation with a few friends. This is still running seven years on and has a permanent social grocery store providing free food to refugees and other desperate families. This duality of interests bodes well for a concerned entrepreneur wanting to make an impact on the world.
As it happens, Suntay discovered Fintech during her masters in management, then joined Deloitte where she could combine this knowledge to her legal profession. In fact, she was so enamoured with Fintech that after three years, she left her job in Deloitte and travelled on a one-way flight to Singapore to look for work. When asked about Singapore, she says it stuck her as Fintech Mecca. It was certainly enough for her to arrive without a job and start seeking out companies and individuals who might be prepared to chat with her.
“Travelling to Singapore without the security of a job was possibly the scariest thing I had ever done. I knew I was passionate about Fintech and that I had an opportunity to meet some of the brightest brains around. Singapore did not disappoint.”
One conversation led to another and she was snapped up by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) – another indicator that she was onto something good, or perhaps that they were.
Suntay joined the FinTech unit of BCG where blockchain real use cases began to appear on her horizon. Although initially apprehensive of blockchain, Suntay saw BCG clients were more and more keen to integrate blockchain-based solutions in their strategy, including different use cases such as supply chain financing.
“I could see that there was so much more than just trading and that the technology, especially the underlying distributed ledger, could have a great impact in modern financial ecosystems.”
Next step was London, this time with a job but also with a one-way ticket. Suntay spent the next two years working out of the BCG London office but she had bigger fish to fry.
“I decided to take the leap into the unknown and set up my own start-up with my co-founder Sebastien Van Hoof. With my legal background I could see that NFTs could operate as contracts on blockchain so I knew we needed to use this technology – it could put the trust into the technology.”
Suntay was also keen to bring about mass adoption. The previous year, NFT utility and membership were key talking points. However, Suntay wanted to do more than just create reward based NFTs, she wanted to create an entire user journey.
“What if we could mint an NFT with whatever token people had in their wallet? Currently, people are siloed in whatever token, or tokens, they have in their wallet. What if they could use the value in any token to make a purchase?”
This is where Suntay reverts to her opening thought. The idea of a debit or credit card not being accepted anywhere does not make sense. So too with tokens.
“We knew we had to move quickly. So, we focused Sprynt into a payments engine where anyone could plug in an API into our App and have access to liquidity from a range of tokens – once they have a value.”
Speed is of the essence and Suntay and her team aim to have their product live shortly. They are looking for partners to become part of the launch. This author is planning on being a launch partner and this article will form part of the journalist NFT collection. Watch this space.